Liquid ethylene vinyl acetate copolymers are conventionally used in many applications, including pressure sensitive adhesions. Currently Lanxess Corporation sells an EVM copolymer under the tradename Levamelt.
Levamelt® has opened up new ways of producing a variety of films with tailor-made properties for applications in many areas: food packaging, labels, adhesive tapes, footwear, sealants etc. The product line includes grades that are suitable for the production of cast and blown films.
Levamelt® is designed for extrusion processes. This technology is advantageous in comparison to solvent coating because it is solvent-free and does not require the expensive drying equipment that is necessary for dispersion coating. Because of its free-flowing granular form, Levamelt® is suitable for processing on standard single or twin-screw extruders. No prior art teaching has demonstrated for the use of Levamelt® in rubber injection molding applications.
US Patent Applications 2003/0139548, 2003/0135001, 2003/0139524 and 2003/0131934 teach the use other solventless liquid rubber polymers in rubber compounds, however there has been no teaching to prepare a compound in accordance with the present invention with a liquid α-olefin vinyl acetate copolymer.